Would it be better to upgrade a GPU now, or would it be best to wait till the next gen of GPU's come out? I was talking about this to one of my friends the other day and this is what he pointed out to me, after me saying that I'm going to wait till next gen comes out:
"But will next gen be stable and reliable?"
And I thought that was a pretty damn good point, I mean who knows? Probably? But will it be any more reliable than current gen GPU's? - I mean I doubt that there'd be any major issues or anything, but I think it's a good point either way.
But I'd like more opinions on the matter, from a reliability perspective, which would be best, upgrade now or wait a while till the next generation for graphics cards are out?
At this point I'd wait since vega should be coming out in a few months and potentially mess with pricing a tad. Personally I wouldn't get a new GPU unless i was experiencing major issues (i.e. muh gamez no werk). As for reliability and stability? not sure what your friend is getting at here... Cards seem to function just fine as far as I can tell. Granted a certain manufacturer struggles in updating drivers for older cards :P They still function fine, in fact as good as they have but there's no improvement over time and the fact games get more demanding with time, it gives the illusion of poorer performance.
Nobody knows, as with anything in the future there is an inherent risk based purely off of uncertainty. This is how finance people make money and why they have so many equations to attempt to deal with this uncertainty.
Very few times has a new generation been considered 'unstable' or 'unreliable' and in those times the issues were limited to one SKU in a lineup of different cards, and return/refund/replace warranty policies are ALWAYS attached to new hardware. Realistically if you wait, buy a new card, and that card has issues you just return it and get a different card from current or last generation.
I guess that does seem to be the best plan of attack, just wait till the next gen is released, and if there are any issues with that card, just take it back and buy a new one, just a generation older.
If you NEED a card, buy it now. I think there will always be the next greatest, bestest on the other side of the fence. The fence being the line between now and the future.
Well I have a card that's struggling quite a lot with a few games... Nothing too intense.... I ran Rage and my FPS was like less than 30 FPS... I hit 18 ~ 16 FPS and it was just morbid.... Actually horrible....
I would say sure, but there's just two issues with that, I live in the UK, so shipping would be pretty expensive, additionally, I have a mini ITX build. Specifically, my case is the RVZ02 and I haven't even bothered trying to make a custom loop in this case, although I'm tempted to way down the line. At this moment in time everything is air cooled, so unfortunately at this moment in time I can't accept a 1080 with a water block...
I'm not sure if you've seen what the RVZ02 is like.... If you haven't let me just tell you this now. Making a custom water cooled loop in this case does NOT look easy, nor does it look like the most fun thing to do, cool on the other hand, personally I think it would be amazing. At this moment in time, I'm not 100% sure that it's even possible to do a custom loop in this case, the CPU height clearance is only 58mm.
I mean if it is possible (I have done 0 research into this, so it may actually be very possible) you'd have to have 110% small form factor/ultra low profile parts, including a fan, rad, pump and water blocks or anything else that you may include... I think I covered pretty much everything that you need for a custom water cooled loop though? ... I've not done custom water cooling before, so I'm not 100% sure there.... Obviously you'd need pipes too... But y'know, you can cut those to size...
What does that even mean, "reliable". Like, will they blow up, or have bad quality control. As far as I'm concerned there really hasn't been any problem regarding GPU's except for the EVGA thing. And even that was a 5% problem. Depending on what price range of GPU you buy usually determines how long they will be able to play games at ultra settings 1080p. For example a 300$ graphics card usually lasts around 3 years. Loot at the r9 390 for exampl. It will most likely begin to fall off around late 2018.
Is always the right answer. Never delay your bliss. Never worry that the price will drop by half in a week (you're gonna get burned no matter what). Never worry that the drivers will be unreliable (they will be).
Just get the best thing you can get ATM, walk away happy and don't listen to the haters that are still waiting for the next gen to drop.
He meant anything from driver issues to heat/cooling issues, and he's an electronics geek, he went on about things that were just going way over my head... :')